Inherent rights, do they exist.

@Zorro
Hi. Hope you don't mind, this is a very interesting subject but I don't want to lose the other thread on Myanmar and gun ownership, So I moved it to here.
Below is most of what w have said so far. I am interested in exploring the idea that some rights are so intrinsic that they cannot be removed, which ones they would be and how we decide which they are.
Cheers Tigger.

Tigger2: Nonsense. Just adding the word inherent means nothing. As I explained an inherent right to life does not keep you alive.
BTW Inherent means "existing in something as a permanent" so it cannot be removed. Whilst the right not to be raped can, just as can the right to live or own guns. Neither are inherent just because you add the word to the sentence.

And you really think that means they could not be taken away by force?

Indeed they did, but you are not immune, however you do make my point. Which is that civilians owning guns in America make such a situation considerably less likely. Not impossible but less likely.

Zorro: I think we have both explained our views satisfactorily so far, let's explore this further from a slightly different angle.

I suspect that our disagreement comes down to discussion of the differences between Rights and Benefits.

Some thoughts on rights from our Framers:

Rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.”
~ Samuel Adams.

Do we have a right to resist a rape?
In your opinion can a just government remove our right to resist a rape?

Certainly we agree that an unjust government can forcibly rape their citizens. China, which is an unjust government has government agents rape Tibetan nuns and Uighur women in the course of their official duties. China forcibly stations government agents into the homes of Tibetans and Uighurs and in the case of Uighurs, these government officials share the beds of the wives of the men they have abducted, and employ as slave labor in concentration camps.

Do you view a government that is exercising unjust power as legitimate or illegitimate?

Contrary to your claim that an inherent right is one that cannot be violated, inherent rights most certainly can and are violated.

An inherent Right is something that you possess simply because you exist, and protecting that right may come with a cost, even the cost of failing to protect it. A Right is not confiscated from another on your behalf.

A Benefit is payment or privilege given to you at the cost of another’s property. Money must be confiscated from another citizen in order to pay for a benefit.

“Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” ~ Frederic Bastiat

Rights aren’t created by legislation. Rights are not granted by government. Rights precede government. Government is created to protect rights.

Here is another angle: Ultimately a government is simply an association of people. How may people create out of thin air what they do not already possess in order to grant it others?

The right to protect things from forceful taking is inseparable from the rights themselves.

“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” – Samuel Adams.

“Each of us has a natural right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?” Frederic Bastiat

If you must wait for government to protect your life, liberty, or property and are not free to do that yourself, then those items do not belong to you, they belong solely to whomever you have relinquished that right of protection. For if those in government who choose not to protect you, or are unable to protect you when you could otherwise protect yourself, then you are in essence a slave — a ward of the state. You are not free. Your rights are forfeited to those upon whom you depend.

https://therevolutionaryact.com/rights-inherent-benefits-granted/

In fact our Courts have ruled on this very issue:

Warren v. District of Columbia: held that the police do not owe a specific duty to provide police services to specific citizens.

In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 16, 1975, Carolyn Warren and Joan Taliaferro, who shared a room on the third floor of their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street Northwest in the District of Columbia, and Miriam Douglas, who shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter, were asleep. The women were awakened by the sound of the back
door being broken down by two men later identified as Marvin Kent and James Morse. The men entered Douglas' second floor room, where Kent forced Douglas to perform oral sex on him and Morse raped her.

Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas' screams from the floor below. Warren called 9-1-1 and told the dispatcher that the house was being burglarized, and requested immediate assistance. The department employee told her to remain quiet and assured her that police assistance would be dispatched promptly.

Warren's call was received at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at 6:23 am, and was recorded as a burglary-in-progress. At 6:26, a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a "Code 2" assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as "Code 1." Four police cruisers responded to the broadcast; three to the Lamont Street address and one to another address to investigate a possible suspect.

Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they observed one policeman drive through the alley behind their house and proceed to the front of the residence without stopping, leaning out the window, or getting out of the car to check the back entrance of the house. A second officer apparently knocked on the door in front of the residence, but left when he received no answer. The three officers departed the scene at 6:33 am, five minutes after they arrived.

Warren and Taliaferro crawled back inside their room. They again heard Douglas' continuing screams; again called the police; told the officer that the intruders had entered the home, and requested immediate assistance. Once again, a police officer assured them that help was on the way. This second call was received at 6:42 am and recorded merely as "investigate the trouble;" it was never dispatched to any police officers.

Believing the police might be in the house, Warren and Taliaferro called down to Douglas, thereby alerting Kent to their presence. At knife point, Kent and Morse then forced all three women to accompany them to Kent's apartment. For the next fourteen hours the captive women were raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon one another, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.

Warren, Taliaferro, and Douglas brought the following claims of negligence against the District of Columbia and the Metropolitan Police Department:
(1) the dispatcher's failure to forward the 6:23 am call with the proper degree of urgency;
(2) the responding officers' failure to follow standard police investigative procedures, specifically their failure to check the rear entrance and position themselves properly near the doors and windows to ascertain whether there was any activity inside; and
(3) the dispatcher's failure to dispatch the 6:42 am call.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

The Court ruled that the three women had no cause of action against the police department or the dispatcher, that the police had no specific legal duty to protect these women or anyone else. In other words, securing our rights is ultimately up to us, and our formational documents that formed our government were conditioned on government recognizing that they had no right to unjustly remove our right to keep and carry the lethal means to do so.

The State Legislatures formed the Federal Government, but, conditioned on the promise that the Federal Government would agree to the Second Amendment.

Article V of the Constitution contains the provisions for amending the Constitution, which must be approved by 3/4ths of the State Legislatures in order to take effect. Are you arguing that the Federal Government can violate the 2nd amendment despite every member of the Federal Government swearing an oath to preserve and protect the constitution?

If so, what are your grounds for such a claim?


Tigger2 I would agree with pretty much all you say here, and as an exercise in the meaning of words it is spot on. The trouble I have is that in the real world it means nothing, and that in this discussion it was being used as if the words could change things in the real world.

Re our rape case. It is ridiculous that the police carry no responsibility for protecting the women. Once your government removes any right you have to use of lethal force, they take on the role of protecting you.
By example, the women are not allowed to rig their stairs with personnel mines to protect themselves.
A thing I find frustrating in the UK is that our police don't waste money catching burglars because its not cost effective, but I am not allowed to add anything to my business premises that might harm in any way those who illegally enter them.

Zorro: But it does. If Rights come from government, rather than are inherent, then it's impossible to limit government.

Let's look at this another way:

i) The State Legislatures would have never formed the Federal Government without the guarantee of the Second Amendment that the Federal Government would never seek to infringe on the People's right to keep and carry firearms.
therefore
ii) How can the Federal Government be the granter of the right to keep and carry firearms when this right predated the Federal Government and this commitment was required in order to allow the Federal Government to form?

It would make more sense to argue that the 2nd amendment created the Federal Government than the Federal Government created the right to keep and carry firearms.
Tigger 2 Re our rape case. It is ridiculous that the police carry no responsibility for protecting the women. Once your government removes any right you have to use of lethal force, they take on the role of protecting you...
Zorro: I completely agree, yet this was a landmark case. In time, and to many it seemed like a very long time, the Court recognized that the second amendment created a personal right to keep arms, in DC, where these rapes occurred, when DC tried to effectively eliminate the right to keep arms in the house.
Tigger2: By example, the women are not allowed to rig their stairs with personnel mines to protect themselves...
Zorro: Right.
Tigger2 A thing I find frustrating in the UK is that our police don't waste money catching burglars because its not cost effective, but I am not allowed to add anything to my business premises that might harm in any way those who illegally enter them.
Zorro: We have the same kinds of laws here. The concern, I'm sure, is excessive force. While we are allowed to use effective lethal force, it needs to be in response to a threat that a reasonable person would deem to be potentially lethal. Passive systems have no means of making those kinds of determinations.

Zorro: But it does. If Rights come from government, rather than are inherent, then it's impossible to limit government.
Tigger2: I feel we are talking at cross purposes. Lets say we agree you are correct and some Rights are inherent and the government cannot change or remove them.
Then an APV turns up outside your home and a squad of paramilitaries 'from your new government, as of yesterdays coup' force their way into your house and at gun point remove your weapons and then your daughter and then shoot your son. They have impugned 3 inherent rights and god did not step in to stop them.
Thus is the situation faced in Myanmar. This is real life and while you are academically correct and could even argue your inherent rights were not removed but were instead abused in my scenario, it makes no difference to the outcome

 

Inherent rights, do they exist.


Yes!


Moi

 

Of course we have rights that can't be taken.
Does this mean people wont attempt to violate them by breaking the law? No.

It's at that point the right to self defense comes into play.

Just because someone can violate them does not mean we dont have them.

Tigger, are you basically arguing we have no rights or am I reading you wrong?

 

It is certainly impressive that you had the motivation to read his thread. It bloviated too much for me.

 

No. We don't have rights that can't be taken.
Inherent rights only exist as a concept - it has no physical backing other than those which society gives it.
There are no magic forces that protect them - only the power of society protects those rights.

 

One inherent right is the right to believe rights can be inherent.

 

Witness our lost guarantees of The Bill of Rights
GWTW
#10.
#4.

 

Rights that aren't enforced effectively don't exist. Human beings through government are the only means of enforcement. Therefore, there are no inherent rights because the only rights that exist are those which are maintained by an authority.

Natural rights, inherent rights, inalienable rights, god-given rights, those are all excellent philosophical arguments, but like most of philosophy, they exist outside of reality.

 

So you think we only have what rights society grants? And you speak of faith even though that's a strawman.

 

So to some degree, liberals in this thread are arguing that rights rest on the whims of mankind.
Well, this man has a right to be left alone. Any who violate that can find out about my right to self defense.

Of course the leftist authoritarians have shown us just what they think of rights with this chinese flu. Many rights place limits on Gov power, we cant have that now, can we?

 

All “rights” are simply a human philosophical construct. They do not exist outside of this. Some societies have codified certain “rights” into law, such as the US. But there is no such thing as natural, inherent, inalienable etc rights.

 

Indeed. We have the personal right to do anything. We can kill someone or sacrifice our life for someone or anything inbetween.
Any right outside ourself is completely dependent on what the society allows and there are no natural rights or God-given rights other than what humans grant each other.
That's why people have to fight to gain a right and work to maintain it.

 

Inherrent rights are life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness!!!!

 

That's the sort of ideology that kings, slavery and England was born of..

 

Amazing the mentality on display in this thread, aint it?

 

Nope.

 

Stunning argument you have presented...

 

There's no argument, its not the sort of ideology that kings, slavery and England was born of..

 

I used to be surprised, nah not really

 

Whooowee, that was deep bro!

 

Yep, it is! It's exactly what and how they ruled over the have nots and those with broken wills.. Only when people fought back, did these tyrant lose their hold on the broken..

 

The only rights anyone has is granted and protected and enforced by a system that a group agrees to.

 

Which has nothing to do with rights.

 

You and a friend are trapped on a desert island and the only hope of survival is cannibalism. Whose right to life is inherent at that point?

 

It's not an ideology, it's a simple statement of fact. There's no special cosmic force that gives rights, therefor there
are no inherent rights - there are rights humans take for themselves or are protected by society. That's just the nature of
the world. It's not right or wrong, it's just the way it is.

Now we can all get together and codify those rights - the right to representation, guns, voting, property ownership, etc - and
call them "inherent" but that just a label - not something that is protected by the Devine.